Beilue: Accident changes, bonds Stratford walkers

For nearly nine years, Ronna Riffe, left, and Kaci McBryde of Stratford have been faithful 5:30 a.m. walkers. But an accident on a walk five years ago Monday nearly killed Kaci and has changed both lives.

Jon Mark Beilue

Jon Mark Beilue

Early on Monday, well before dawn, Kaci McBryde and Ronna Riffe will give each other some kind of small gift. It will be a trinket, a token, to acknowledge that morning five years ago.

“It is an anniversary that we know we have a lot to be thankful for,” McBryde said. “A lot of blessings have come out of this. We are not the same people we were before that.”

These teachers from Stratford are in their ninth year of their five-days-a-week 5:30 a.m. three-mile walk. It began at the start of the 2003-04 school year routinely enough.

They knew each other. They needed exercise. They needed to get it done before the kids awoke. Plus, misery loves company and it would help to have an accountability partner.

But when two people are side by side 45 minutes a day approximately 250 times a year, they can’t help but become close. Otherwise, those are some miserable mornings.

“Walking is one of those where you can walk and talk at the same time,” Riffe said.

So here they were, on a Tuesday, April 1, 2008, less than 50 yards from finishing just another three-mile walk at Ronna and Chris’ house on the edge of Stratford’s eastern most street, Beaver Road. They were well in a ditch, off the road, talking about Mary Kay Cosmetics.

And then ...

“I don’t know how believable this sounds, but it was like a spaceship had come down and taken her,” Riffe said. “It was that bizarre. Never was there a second of warning. It was just this incredible force and then she was gone.”

A vehicle, heading north, had not only crossed lanes, but crossed into the ditch. McBryde was on Riffe’s left, furthest from the road. The car missed Riffe by inches, but not McBryde, The collision took her yards away and into the road.

McBryde remembers nothing. Her first awareness was after five days in the Intensive Care Unit at Northwest Texas Hospital.

Riffe remembers everything: Running to her. Deciding not to move her because it could cause further injury. The gnawing fear that as she sprinted to her house — Chris was away on a business trip — to call 911 and Brad, McBryde’s husband, knowing that her friend could get hit again in the dark morning.

“Leaving her like that just haunted me forever,” Riffe said.

McBryde was fortunate, if a broken left femur, breaks in her skull, neck and back can be considered fortunate. She had surgery on her leg and was hospitalized eight days.

With rehab in Dumas and Dalhart, McBryde impressed doctors by quickly progressing from wheelchair to walker to cane to walking. She spent eight weeks in braces from chin to waist, discarding them in late May that year for daughter Kenlee’s kindergarten graduation.

“I used to be the one to cry at commercials on TV, but I had to be tough,” McBryde said. “I didn’t have a choice. My mindset was ‘whatever it takes.’”

In August 2008, the two began to walk a little bit. By the end of the year, they were walking their three-mile distance, though on the safer Stratford High School track. Not that there wasn’t some residue. For McBryde, 32, it was still physical. For Riffe, six years older, it was emotional.

“You just don’t know how traumatizing that can be,” Riffe said. “I can understand in a little way how soldiers get post-traumatic stress. I was so traumatized by the sound and that feeling and leaving her to get my phone. It’s not survivors guilt because I survived, but how could it not happen to me when we were walking side by side?”

Riffe and McBryde are almost five years exactly back into their morning routine since the accident. They don’t think about that day much until April Fools Day gets closer and they reflect a bit, but they are changed because of it. They are stronger, closer, appreciative of their neighbors and more forgiving than they thought.

Neither has despised the man who hit McBryde, who returned to the scene shortly after with a confused and bloody face. He was never charged with negligence on that frosty cold morning as he went to work.

They don’t know why he was so far from where he should have been. Not that it matters now. They don’t know his name. He was in Stratford illegally, they heard, and in a short time, was out of the country.

“I can honestly tell you that from the bottom of my heart,” McBryde said, “I never felt bitterness or blamed the driver. He didn’t mean to do it.”

With time as a telescope, they found out things about themselves they wouldn’t have known otherwise. And they have long known the value of three miles on dark mornings extends beyond staying fit. Sometimes that’s the least of it.

“We take so many things for granted,” said Riffe, “but it is such a privilege to get up and meet a friend at 5:30 and walk.”

Jon Mark Beilue is a Globe-News columnist. He can be reached at jon.beilue@amarillo.com or 806-345-3318. His blog appears on amarillo.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonmarkbeilue.

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